Since Microsoft Corp. bought Vermeer, a WYSIWYG Web-site authoring and management programme, and renamed it, the package has catapulted to the forefront of the Web authoring-tool market. FrontPage 1.1 has added support for tables, frames, client-side image maps, and other features Webmasters have been clamouring for, and it features an architecture designed for multiuser remote authoring and site maintenance.
Since Microsoft has declared the Web a key to its strategic direction, the company has supplied FrontPage 1.1 with many features of the Microsoft Office toolset. Office users who try FrontPage 1.1 will find several familiar features and interface elements, including several buttons on the toolbars, multilevel undo, and a shared spell-checker dictionary. This, together with support for HTML 3.0 and the new price, are likely to help FrontPage 1.1 find a high degree of acceptance, particularly in the corporate marketplace.
What's in Frontpage?
FrontPage 1.1 consists of three basic tools used in building and administering a Web site: the Explorer, Editor, and To Do List. FrontPage 1.1 also ships with the 32-bit Personal Web Server, which supports CGI and HTTP, as well as several server extensions for Windows NT and Unix Web servers.
Web-site creation begins with the FrontPage Explorer tool, where the Web file is named and saved. FrontPage lets permissions be set via the Tools menu in the Explorer, so author, administrator, and end-user access can be controlled.
Once you create the site, you can add pages from the FrontPage Editor, which offers a selection of templates and wizards to aid in the creation of new pages. You can also create your own templates based on a page you have customized. Wizards step you through the creation of complex pages, gathering information from you in a series of dialog boxes. While this approach puts commonly used Web pages such as tables of contents, feedback forms, FAQ sheets, and even search pages within reach of the HTML illiterate, it does not provide the kind of instant feedback found in a true WYSIWYG editor. The FrontPage Frames wizard lets you create sophisticated frame sets, but unfortunately, you cannot view pages with frames in the FrontPage Editor. You must open them with a frame-compatible Web browser to review them.
Integration with Microsoft Office
Among the buttons that will be familiar to Microsoft Office users is a new alignment button on one of the FrontPage Editor's four toolbars. In this new version, the alignment functionality features WYSIWYG control over images as well as text.
You can easily add Office documents to a site, and the appropriate Microsoft program is automatically launched if you want to edit one of these documents. Once the editing is complete, the updated files are automatically reimported to the Web. Like the Office products, FrontPage includes the drop-down Style Menu in the toolbar. The functionality of the style menu is, of course, limited by what is available in HTML, but it does provide quick access to several commonly used HTML styles.
The FrontPage Explorer
Once you've created your Web file and begun to add pages to it, the FrontPage Explorer helps keep track of the structure and hyperlinks that make up the site. The Explorer provides three views: the Outline View, Link View, and Summary View. The Outline View presents the pages in a list form with an expandable view of linked pages. The Link View provides a graphics representation of the site's structure, including lines and arrows to describe the link relations. The Summary View displays a list with information about the files making up a site. This information includes the file's name, type, and size, etc., as well as who created the file and what the URL is. Files can be sorted by any of the categories in this view.
The Verify Link command has been extended in version 1.1 so that a list of broken links is displayed, and changes made can be applied globally or to a selection of instances of the link. This feature alone makes HTML editors worth the money. For bad but fixable links, the To Do List feature helps track all the loose ends inherent in the Web-site creation process.
Summary
As said in the review of HomeSite 2.0, webmasters around the world dislike the WYSYWIG editing, which FrontPage is so in love with. Webmasters would much rather 'get their hands dirty' than simply drag and drop images onto a virtual page. However, if you don't have the time, nor the inclanation to learn HTML, then Microsoft's FrontPage might be quite a viable solution.
If and when Microsoft fully integrates FrontPage into its Office product suite, publishing Web documents and managing sites will no longer be the challenge; the challenge will be maintaining the information. FrontPage brings us closer to that day.
